The man who began his publishing career writing stunningly good science fiction/weird/horror novels and short stories under his full name (just add Smith to the end) and who has written a ghost story for young adults under the name M.M. Smith seems to take a perverse delight in being impossible to find in bookshops and libraries. His Michael Marshall novels, contemporary thrillers with paranormal/supernatural tints, are likewise difficult to pigeonhole: The Intruders, recently adapted into an excellent television mini-series for BBC America, and his most recent novel We Are Here are 'low' fantasy on the grittier end of the tradition popularised by Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman, while his Straw Men novels a trilogy comprising The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead and The Blood Of Angels that was recently joined by Killer Move are hardnosed conspiracy/crime thrillers invoking the specifically American mythology of the serial killer. Specifically though, Marshall evokes that mythology and codifies and expands upon it: the Straw Men of the title are a cult, a family, a secret government of serial killers, and they may have been in America longer than America has been America: the infamous 'lost Roanoke colony' of 118 people that disappeared in the sixteenth century, leaving only the word CROATOAN carved into a fence post to mark their passing, could have been the work of the Straw Men. If the spree killer, the domestic terrorist, the sociopathic fantasist and the violent psychopath are the monsters lurking in the shadows of American culture whos casting the shadows? Marshalls narrative evokes the best of Thomas Harris work, with a chilling ill wind blowing through it that smacks of Stephen King. Imagine a television show that was equal parts X-Files, Hannibal, True Detective and Lost (like The Following, but really, really good instead of crapsticks). This was their country first, you know
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
